biodegradable plastic

The past few weeks Ive been disturbed by the amount of waste in my bin which is just plastic packaging. So I spent a week or so seeing how easy it would be to shop for food without plastic packaging, which proved very challenging and restrictive, I thought vegan's had it hard.

I began to look at alternate forms of packaging and discovered plastic can be made with starch, so I set out to make plastic from potato starch, vegetable oil and water.

I had varying successes but it did make me think that producing plastic from potatoes would mean wasting an awful lot of food although a better option than having petrolium based plastic lying around for decades.

I also discovered that designers have started to produce disposable cutlery made out of potato starch and from the shells of cashew nuts which is great as it is a bi product as apposed to using food. Designers have also been making shopping bags made of a biodegradable polymer derived from lactic acid( the bi product of anarobic respiration in humans and animals).

Then I stumbled across D2W(metal salt) and eco-one which are organic additives which can be added to all petrolium based plastics and make it biodegrade into organic units which can be digested by bacteria.

http://uk.ecologic-llc.com/

The icing on the cake is that with D2w depending on how much you add you can set an expiration date on how long the plastic lasts for before it decomposes e.g. 5 months, 4 years.

Which is great because it means depening on the products life cycle it can be given an expiration date or controlled life and begin to decompose after it has been disposed off.

The plastic can also be recycled if it is gathered before the d2w has taken effect.

Plastic is designed to completely degrade between 60 to 90 days once the d2w has been activated and then breaks down in the soil releasing its carbon and nutrients to the plants.

D2w can be added to any plastic and doesn't even require changes to designs or suppliers techniques or machinery.

If you wish to understand the chemistry behind d2w check out the link below:

Symphony Environmental - What is d2w?